I looked into this fellow. One really interesting bit is that he seems to have been executed for a crime he didn't commit, because he refused to give an alibi.
> His most famous songs include "The Preacher and the Slave" (in which he coined the phrase "pie in the sky"[4]), "The Tramp", "There is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions.[5]
> In 1914, John G. Morrison, a Salt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son were shot and killed by two men.[6] The same evening, Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a gunshot wound, and briefly mentioned a fight over a woman. Yet Hill refused to explain further, even after he was accused of the grocery store murders on the basis of his injury. Hill was convicted of the murders in a controversial trial. Following an unsuccessful appeal, political debates, and international calls for clemency from high-profile figures and workers' organizations, Hill was executed in November 1915. After his death, he was memorialized by several folk songs. His life and death have inspired books and poetry.
> The identity of the woman and the rival who supposedly caused Hill's injury, though frequently speculated upon, remained mostly conjecture for nearly a century. William M. Adler's 2011 biography of Hill reveals new information about his alibi, which was never introduced at his trial.[7] According to Adler, Hill and his friend and countryman, Otto Appelquist, were rivals for the attention of 20-year-old Hilda Erickson, a member of the family with whom the two men were lodging. In a recently discovered letter, Erickson confirmed her relationship with the two men and the rivalry between them. The letter indicates that when she first discovered Hill was injured, he explained to her that Appelquist had shot him, apparently out of jealousy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
There was also the Women's Trade Union League, founded in 1903, and the American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886.
Eg, it says "labor leader Joe Hill was arrested", but doesn't say why that's notable.
It says there was labor unrest, and thousands of strikes by workers who wanted higher wages and an 8-hour work day, but doesn't mention that the labor movement had been pushing for an 8 hour day/48 hour week for decades.
(See http://bportlibrary.org/hc/bridgeport-at-war/strikes-for-the... for a description of the Bridgeport strike, which does mention the unions, and strikes by non-unionized workers.)
It never mentions the name of a union. But it does mention the fraternal organizations "Freemasons, the Knights of Columbus, Rotary, and the Elks, ... and the Kiwanis Club".